Oral history of Wrigley Field spans generations

Interviews evoke the storied ballpark's meaning to generations of fans

January 09, 2014|By Josh Noel

Notable fans share their memories of the ballpark in the new book "Wrigley Field" by Ira Berkow, with contribution by Josh Noel. (Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune)

The golden moment when I realized I was working on something bigger than baseball happened during a 90-minute phone call with Rod Blagojevich.

The former governor was between corruption trials — the first produced a hung jury, the second ended in conviction — and I'd been vying for his attention for a couple of months. After several unsuccessful trips to his Ravenswood Manor home, I decided to leave a handwritten note explaining my mission.

Within an hour, my phone rang. On the other end was that iconic, slightly nasal voice that always sounds as if it is selling something. How did I get the governor to call? I told him the truth: I wanted to talk about only Wrigley Field and the Chicago Cubs.

For 90 minutes, Blagojevich was a stream of words and memories, pontification and education ("Wrigley Field is the No. 3 tourism attraction for our state. Did you know that?"). He recalled lineups from decades-old games and recited players' uniform numbers. He told me of the bond formed with his daughter, Amy, during hours at Wrigley, and how being governor lofted him to unlikely status within an organization he'd loved since boyhood.

"One of the benefits of being governor is the Cubs took my phone calls," Blagojevich said. During occasional lunches with former Cubs General Manager Jim Hendry, he said, he would "pepper (Hendry) with questions and suggest off-season moves."

"I had a staff when I was governor, and I would have them look up the top prospects in the Red Sox or Marlins organizations and go to these lunches prepared, so I could make trade suggestions," the former governor said. "It was a chance to be like a kid again. I don't think he did anything I said, but at least he listened. He was very polite about it."

Whether Blagojevich should have used his gubernatorial staff to research potential Cubs trades is a matter for someone else to take up. As a fellow lifelong fan of the team, I was deeply amused, and it made me realize there was gold to be mined from the oral history I was gathering on the team and its stadium. The interviews have been compiled into a coffee-table book called "Wrigley Field: An Oral and Narrative History of the Home of the Chicago Cubs," which was published Jan. 7.

My long-time friend and mentor, Ira Berkow, a New York Times sports columnist for nearly 30 years, had been contracted to write the narrative history of Wrigley Field. He hired me to gather the oral history.

I had relatively wide leeway on whom to interview, but with a few guiding principles: The interviewees must be recognizable, have a history with the team and the stadium, and be thoughtful and illuminating. We wanted voices from across disciplines — actors, politicians, writers, musicians and, of course, ballplayers.

Chicago authors Scott Turow and Sara Paretsky quickly came to mind. So did former Cubs of varying generations: Ron Santo from the '60s and '70s (whom I interviewed six months before he died), Ryne Sandberg from the '80s and '90s, and Kerry Wood from the 2000s (who so encapsulated the Cubs experience that his comments became the book's foreword). Then my thoughts went to people known primarily for one thing — i.e. Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins frontman; Larry Bell, founder of Bell's Brewery; Blagojevich, former Illinois governor — who also were Cubs fans. I wanted to break through their public personas and dig into another passion: baseball.

Of the nearly two dozen people I contacted, almost no one declined an interview. How could they resist a chance to talk baseball? The Cubs? Wrigley Field?

The topic evoked floods of memories. They usually talked for an hour or more, which seemed like extraordinary generosity. But then it became clear that they weren't talking about just the Cubs or Wrigley Field or even baseball: They were talking about themselves — their lives, hopes, dreams and relationships.

Whether he realized it or not, Turow traced his life's journey through the hours he has spent at Wrigley Field. We talked about his relationship with his father ("My dad delivered babies and was rarely around, so some of my most treasured memories are of going to Cubs games with him"), his high school years (he and a friend heading to different colleges took in a late summer game to say goodbye), his early career as a lawyer ("I'd usually sneak out of the office and catch a day game rather than take time from the weekend with my kids") and becoming a best-selling author (after Turow threw out a ceremonial first pitch, Mets outfielder Bobby Bonilla ran in with a copy of Turow's latest book to sign).